bongomania
Commercial User
That's very interesting, and it sort of confirms a suspicion I have. One of the reasons studio engineers widely like a given piece of gear is because it works well on a wide range of source material, and it helps those tracks sound better without drawing attention to itself. So where the studio guys say that X gear makes everything sound amazing, they are coming from a completely different perspective than the guitar/bassist looking at pedals. The guitar/bassist is more likely to want to hear a real noticeable color change, noticeable fattening, noticeable effect where you can clearly point to the pedal and say "it sounds like that". This is true even when we're talking about legends like the LA2A and 1176; when they are brand new and in spec, they are surprisingly not very colorful or obvious sounding. The ones that have a noticeable grunge or color tend to be old and out of spec. Individual ones may be coveted for that reason, but this is why I sometimes try to dial back people's expectations from pedals that claim to be influenced by the LA2A and 1176, and why I commented in my review of the Cali76TX that it did not sound the same as the 1176LN, but might sound better for our purposes.
